NEW EXPERIMENTAL METHODS FOR STUDYING MEDICAL MUDS SAMPLES

Gerencsér G., Szendi K., Murányi E., Varga Cs.

Department of Public Health Medicine, University of Pécs, Hungary

During the past decade health tourism has had an important role in the prevention of diseases, besides recreation and relaxation. Spa therapies have significant functions in prevention, which are available for most of the social classes. Although these treatments are frequently used in therapy or prevention, the effects of spa waters and peloids are mostly unknown. Most of the information we have are just on the inorganic salts, but we know less the organic compounds, as active ingredients of waters and peloids. As a matter of fact we are not even aware of the absorption of known compounds into the human body and their mode of action. The different studies published in this field have no data which could confirm the presence of probably toxic agents.

Hungary is one of the world’s few countries which have considerably rich sources of spa waters and peloids. Our country has several spa waters and four certified peloids.

The objective of the present paper is to detect the possible toxic and genotoxic effects of peloid compounds.

Our previous ecotoxicological experiments were carried out on lower organisms to test toxicity. From the results of these tests we concluded that muds could possibly contain components which were harmful for lower organisms.

Comet assay is used for the examination of potential genotoxic environmental components. It is adequate for all eukaryotic cell types. We used human lymphocytes as a special exposure model.

The aim of the present study is to find analogy between the test results of the lower organisms’ cells (plants, worms, and algae) and human cells in comet assay. The results of these new experiments would be appropriate in tests on lower organisms’ cells instead of human cells in comet assay.